In which I am flogging a book I haven't read

No, really. This week marked the debut of Lisa Fain's cookbook, Homesick Texan. It's an offshoot of her fabulous blog of the same name, and I have no doubt it will be every bit as divine. (I'm getting mine on Saturday--my darling mother ordered a copy as a present for me. She was also smart enough to order another for herself. She knows I have sharing issues...)

Moving away from Texas eight years ago was a challenge. Some things I was happy to let go of. (Yes, interstate traffic, I'm looking at you.) Other things I came to realize later were not half so bad as I had thought. (That would be TxDot--the Texas Department of Transportation. Having lived in another state with a different bureaucracy and different roads, I can only say, I MISS YOU GUYS.)

But what I knew right off the bat would knock me to my knees with longing was the food. Texas is a big place with lots of different culinary influences, all of them good. There's beef, of course, with steaks so luscious they'd make a vegan smack a kitten just to get one. There's Tex-Mex, which I'm pretty sure could be the foundation of its own religion. There's barbecue and soul food and good old-fashioned Southern cooking.

Texas has it all, and when you're raised with it, you just take some things for granted. Like chicken-fried steak and Frito pies. I will never forget the look of astonishment on a volunteer mother's face when I walked up to a concession stand at a school event and asked for a Frito pie. She kept insisting they couldn't make such a thing until I pointed out that she had a bag of Fritos, a pot of chili, cheese, and a pair of scissors. I finally had to take her through it step by step until she did it, and when it was over she still looked at me as though I had four heads and muttered something about pies needing to be sweet. (Tell that to a pot pie, Gladys.)

So, missing the food of my home has been a serious issue for me--one that leads me to stuff myself to the point of indelicacy every time I am back in Texas. I have knocked the edge off my cravings with some recipes from Robb Walsh's books and a few things from Grady Spears, excellent gentlemen both of them. For me, Lisa is the third member of the triumvirate. I feel like I'm going home every time I read her blog, and to my absolute delight, she REALLY knows her stuff. The recipes I've tried have been dead on, and I would give this girl a kidney for posting her flour tortilla recipe alone. (Seriously--making those tortillas was like finding the Holy Grail of floury, doughy love.) Needless to say, I am jumping up and down and shaking my pom-poms over this one. Go buy it--I'll wait.